


You Can Trade Me for an Apparition

by theemdash



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Buried Alive, Gen, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Protective Siblings, Recreational Drug Use, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 06:37:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19079527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theemdash/pseuds/theemdash
Summary: When Klaus wakes up in a dark, cramped space it takes him a minute to figure out he's been buried alive. Set after Five left the team, but before Ben died.





	You Can Trade Me for an Apparition

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to momebie for reading this over to check for typos.

Usually when Klaus was left alone in a dark, confined space, he knew how he'd gotten there. Dad would bark it was time for Klaus to “Rise to his potential” or “Get over his foolish fears,” before dragging him, feet skidding, to the nearest cemetery. Even when he was high, he remembered his resistance, how hard he’d fought, the sweet pain of his knees striking concrete. But this time the moments before being enclosed in a tomb were lost. 

This was darker than the mausoleum, though, and the air was closer, denser, like it was weighing down on him as much as the anticipation of apparitions.

He shifted, trying to position gangly elbows to leverage himself into a sitting position, but froze, finding fabriced walls far too close. The image appeared in his mind before the word, the terror catching in his throat. The ceiling was inches above him, all the way down his body. _No._ No, no, no, no, no. 

He covered his face, squeezing his eyes shut, but it didn’t make it any darker, didn’t change the circumstances. Faces flashed out of the black of his mind’s eye, the same ghoulish faces that called Klaus’s name every time he was forced into the mausoleum, the figures who wanted things he couldn’t give, who begged him for absolution he could never grant. They weren’t here with him, except in his mind, but it didn’t make them any less real, any less of a reminder of what could happen to him if he didn’t escape this—this _coffin._

Sobering reality bled in around his fear. He grabbed his uniform tie, fighting it loose from his neck to give him a second to breathe.

He opened his eyes, wasn’t sure they were open, and then decided it didn’t matter as he started feeling, forcing his hands to touch and define the confines of his box, making the whole situation startlingly real. The lid didn’t move when he pushed against it. No latch or easy-to-open release. If he wanted out, he needed to go through. 

Klaus checked his pockets for anything useful: a joint and a lighter, different kind of useful, and something he might consider more deeply if he couldn’t come up with a better plan; a bottle of nail polish, Black Diamond, currently chipping off his nails; and... a knife. 

He pulled the switchblade from his pocket, remembering the heavy feel of it when Diego had smacked it into his palm just before they’d left for their latest mission. “Just in case,” he’d said, like Klaus could ever pull a knife on someone. 

He remembered now—sort of: lookout at the city cemetery, smoking a joint to keep the spooks at bay, grabbed from behind, ether-soaked rag covered his face. They’d gone to confront the Graverobber. Guess the Graverobber decided it was time for him to give back to the graves.

Klaus flipped the switchblade open and stabbed into the fabric above him, tearing through stitches and padding, pulling it away and kicking the debris to the bottom of the coffin. The next blow stole the knife from his hand, the blade stuck in the exposed wooden lid. He wrestled it free, tugging with both hands, gritting his teeth and stabbing the lid again. 

He could feel ghosts pressing closer, sensing his sobriety and coming to his shining paranormal beacon. He squeezed his eyes shut, pushing them away as best he could to focus on the task at hand—to focus on escape—but their essence creeping closer made his flesh prickle while he got nowhere breaking through the lid. 

He stopped his attack to trace over the damage—a few random slices; the lid hadn’t even splintered. He pressed his hand flat against the lid, trying not to imagine the coffin buried six feet under, the way dirt would pour in and choke down his throat as he tried to dig his way out. 

The ghosts were closer. He could practically smell them now, skin humming with their nearness, already anticipating them sweeping past his flesh, begging for his attention. Coffin already felt crowded and it wasn’t going to get any roomier. How many seconds before they swarmed him? Before he’d hear their voices calling his name?

The joint in his pocket felt heavier, more tempting, more inevitable as the futility dug in. If he was going to die, why not be high? 

He stabbed the blade into the lid and fumbled in his pockets for the lighter and drugs. The lighter had trouble catching, but then it flared; a pair of mangled hands reaching for his feet were illuminated for a terrifying second before he tilted his head back to inhale. He closed his eyes and let the drugs have him—prayed they’d take him faster, and that if he had to die, he’d at least die alone.

The lid of the coffin shook with two hard thunks, dust raining into Klaus’s face.

“Klaus?! Klaus!” 

“Luther?” The joint fell, singed his arm, but it didn’t matter. Luther was fucking coming to his rescue! “Luther! I’m here! I’m here!” He grabbed the switchblade and started stabbing at the coffin lid again, like it would help him break through, and then Luther’s fist punched through the lid, raining dust and dirt into Klaus’s coughing face. Air rushed into his lungs and for a moment he thought he was getting high just off the oxygen.

Luther grabbed Klaus by the collar and hauled him out of the coffin. He pulled Klaus in for a hug, momentarily forgetting his strength, but a bruised rib was survivable. 

“You’re okay?” Allison leaned over the hole, hands on her knees, the worry reading even through her domino mask. Ben stood next to her, pulling down his bloodstained shirt and looking like he might hurl.

Before Klaus could respond, Diego pulled him into a hug, his face pressed into Klaus’s neck. “Thought you were gone,” he whispered. Just as quickly Diego jerked away, nose wrinkled. “Were you getting high in there?”

How could he begin to tell them what it was like to wake up in a coffin? To know he’d been at death’s door with no hope of fighting his way out on his own? To try—and fail—to save himself because when it came to the superpowers lottery, Klaus had struck out big time?

Klaus shrugged. “Seemed like the best use of my time.”

Diego groaned and shoved at Klaus’s head, pushing away the lingering fear that had been prickling the edges of Klaus’s senses the same way the dead did. That one motion put Klaus back into place, on familiar ground, loved and disrespected. 

Luther cradled his hands to boost Klaus out of the hole, but Klaus said, “Hold up,” and leaned back into the coffin to fish out his joint. At his brother’s looks he shrugged one more time. “I hadn’t finished.” He pinched it between his teeth while he scrambled up Luther, and gave Ben and Allison a wicked smile as they pulled him up and out of his grave. The cemetery was empty except for the Hargreeves. Klaus took another hit from the joint to keep it that way.


End file.
